


Welcome! To The West!!!

by InsertSthMeaningful



Category: Slow West (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, Fix-It of Sorts, Found Family, Multi, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25597768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful
Summary: In a different version of reality, Rose's bullet misses Jay's heart and Silas remains what he always has been: adrift - save for a few regular visits to the farm beyond Silverghost.But Rose knows that one day, things will change.
Relationships: Jay Cavendish/Rose Ross/Silas Selleck
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6





	Welcome! To The West!!!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darkMountain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkMountain/gifts).



> This was inspired by a convo I had with the lovely [ultralarryus](https://ultralarryus.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr! She even drew some [fanart](https://ultralarryus.tumblr.com/post/624655420887367680/did-this-a-few-months-ago-but-after-realizing) for Slow West (she draws _gorgeous_ art just in general, go check it out) and was equally as amazed by a potential fix-it as me. Her take was a little different than mine (I'm currently working on a Fix-It where they're all playing house together from the start whereas she pinned Silas down as the type to just come and go as he pleases) and I was intrigued, so... here it is. 
> 
> Y'know, the Scottish and Irish accent translator was my best friend while editing this. And the betaing is... by me. Forgive me the occasional grammar or spelling slip-up, please, I'm but a non-native speaker 👀

Rose noticed the horse when she returned from inspecting their wheat crops.

At first, she mistook it for a Fata Morgana. A figment of her imagination, conjured up by the shimmering air and the baking heat of the West's sun frying her brain in her skull, even under her broad-brimmed Stetson. A mirage born of unabashed hope.

But as she drew closer and made a detour for the washing line to bunch up the dried linens and children’s dresses under her arm, the horse retained its shape; remained very much real. It was standing by the veranda of their patched-up farmhouse: a beautiful chestnut mare, neck curved gracefully downwards to nibble at the scattered patches of not-yet yellowed grass. Its reins were trailing on the ground.

Rose’s steps as she hurried to the porch, up its creaking steps and over its blood-mottled floorboards roused tiny clouds of prairie dust. It settled on her battered boots, even the wash she was carrying.

She couldn’t have cared less. All she cared about was safety. 

Since the shoot-out, her Colt had remained by her side every minute of the day, in the holster by her hip. If a fiend had come to seek trouble here at the arse-end of the world, she would ensure that he got it.

And if everything _but_ a fiend had decided to show his face around here again, she – and the boy and the children she loved and cared for so much – had other methods in store to greet him.

“Jay?” she called and fumbled with the handle of their rackety front door. “Are ye there?”

Blessedly, he door swung open, and then she was faced with four pairs of eyes staring questioningly at her hastened entrance: Silas at the kitchen table, with his dust-coated boots propped up on the chair opposite him (something she would have had Jay’s head for, but then again they were around each other every day and could afford to play the rougher part of house every now and then); Oscar and Astrid, the Swedish children they had taken in, pausing their heckling about who got to sit on their less present pappa’s lap; Jay standing by the hearth, with the teakettle on its way to the kitchen table paused in mid-air.

Silas was the one to break the hear-a-needle-fall silence. “Rose,” he said, and his timid smile widened almost imperceptibly. “Yer joined us at just the right time. Tea’s wet.”

Jay behind him unfroze and nodded, grinning. “He arrived just when Ah was teaching the children written multiplication. Ah told him he could have as much Earl Grey as he wants as long as he doesn’t reek his bloody cigars inside.”

“You wee killjoy,” Silas huffed, but gratefully held out his mug for Jay to pour him a few inches of the steaming opaque liquid. Then, he carefully set it down and helped Oscar clamber onto his stretched legs.

“Well, thank ye anyway for gracin' us with yer presence once again, love,” Rose said once she’d gotten over her first surprise and relief. As she went to put the laundry away, she collected a kiss from Jay and then passed it right on to Silas, who had to bend his neck at an uncomfortable angle to meet her lips over the chair’s backrest. “Any news East?” she asked and hunkered down to fix the collar of Astrid’s dress.

The other chair creaked as Jay went to straddle Silas’ legs, his own cup of tea in hand and one for Rose, and the Irish man grinned at him from over the top of Oscar’s head. 

“None. Bounty hunting is a dyin' business. I ought ter retire soon,” he told them evenly. 

Rose sighed and straightened up. “Ye know there’s always a warm bed here for you.”

Silas nodded, and when she rounded his chair to stand behind him and bury her fingers in his thinning hair, he leaned into the touch like a man starved of human contact – Astrid gave a small giggling “Eww,” but Rose knew the children had long since gotten used to their momma holding enough love for not one but two men in her heart.

So, Rose ignored her eldest’s antics – the girl was already off again anyway, busy getting heaved onto Silas’ legs at Jay’s end – and devoted herself to the contemplation of her other lover.

Already, there were streaks of grey silently making their way into Silas’ ginger locks, which he kept short and tidy as always. Lines had carved their way around his eyes and mouth, over his forehead, like broadening riverbeds. She thought she could count more born from worry than from laughter.

“Why have ye returned for us tae lavish attention onto you, Silas?” she muttered and gently ran a finger over his closed eyelids. “What is the reason?”

Silas grunted. “I'd say you aren't payin' attention to me right now so much as smotherin' me in affection.” He opened his eyes to look straight into Oscar’s. “In fact, you’re crushing me, young man.”

“I’ll take him,” Jay offered and got up only for Astrid to promptly take his place astride Silas’ shins. “Here’s what Ah think: You’re getting old, silverfox.”

Silas blinked up at him, the corners of his eyes crinkling with that warm tint of affection Rose had only ever seen in him when it came to the young Scotsman he had met on the drift so many years ago. " _Y_ _ou_ will never stop bein' that insufferable greenhorn from Scotland, though.”

Jay laughed, bent down to press kiss after greedy kiss to Silas’ lips while the man just sat and chuckled into it. Jay’s hand - _the sneaky wee bastard_ \- was warm on the small of Rose’s back.

Rose smiled. By Silas’ feet, Oscar and Astrid were huddling together, surely plotting out their next masterplan of evil shenanigans. She couldn’t be bothered less.

They had all missed Silas very much. They would miss him again when he left, and until he returned once more.

Without him, they still might have been a family. But they were far from complete.

-

Silas left them for the East four more times after that. The years went by, and he returned and departed again, leaving the children to grow up, Jay and Rose to age in the arid and hot and cold and wet climate of the prairie, and their self-supplying farm to thrive and flourish.

Every time he suddenly appeared on their doorstep like a mirage, they showered him in affection. And every time he turned their back on them once more, they stood on the porch and waved their farewells into the shimmering air until he and his horse had disappeared in the shadows of Silverghost.

-

The fifth time he returned, Silas was old and broken and weary of drifting. Barely in his fifties, he had seen and lived more than any ordinary man could have endured in a hundred lifetimes.

This time, he took the offer of a warm bed. He let Rose heat him water on the hearth for a bath; he listened and smiled as Astrid and Oscar crowed about their studies and how they planned on leaving the farm for the nearest city as soon as they had enough coin scraped together; he lay down beside Jay in the evening and watched with him as Rose undressed before she slipped under the covers with them, took their kisses, drew patterns on their skin as she had always dreamed she would one day.

That day had come. They were home, all of them.

And this time, Silas stayed. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it! If you did, **please** consider leaving kudos and a comment. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate, just a "+kudos" or a "loved it!" would make my day!!! It means so much to an author to see people take the time to actually type out words instead of simply hitting one (1) kudos button, and it's a very easy way to make us writers - who dedicate so much of our free time to create content for you - happy!


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